GWAR Introduces Itself

BOB GORMAN: Hello, patrons of the arts. My name is Bob Gorman. And I am one of the many artistic geniuses who make up the Slave Pit Art Collective. On display here you can see some of the props and costumes created, and worn, by the shock rock band GWAR. Which has, for 33 long years, been the flagship production of Slave Pit, Incorporated. We take our craft very seriously. Art truly is the highest achievement, and most rewarding human endeavor.

BERZERKA BLOTHAR: What’s all this then? What blasphemy are you speaking? Shut your mouth, slave, I will throttle you! Die, human!

Greetings, worthless ones. I am the Berzerka Blothar, leader of GWAR. And I command your attention! The exhibit standing before you represents a bloody tableau, wherein your intergalactic lords and masters GWAR utterly destroy the church, the arts, the government, and the military of your puny world. This long-held dream of the utter annihilation of the human race has eluded us, thanks to your incessant breeding. It has taken us 33 years, but as this glorious diorama suggests, the destruction of your civilization is at hand! Submit to your masters now! GWAR lives!

Band member Michael Bishop on the name “GWAR”

MICHAEL BISHOP: My name is Michael Bishop, and I am the human slave of the Berzerker Blothar, who is the singer for GWAR. People ask me “What does GWAR mean?” all the time. GWAR is a sort of exclamation. One of the earliest flyers for the band had a sort of comic book drawing of these monsters with the letters G-G-G-G-W-W-W-A-A-A-R-R-R-G-G-G-H-H-H. Like a Pirate saying ‘GWARGGH!’ It’s the way that you would draw in a comic book in one of the sort of speech bubbles. And we shrank those letters down into a single, four-letter word, GWAR, which made sense for us because we were also at the time looking at bands that had four letter names, mainly Kiss and Devo and other bands that had sort of a short tight little four letter word name and GWAR was just perfect for that.

GWAR is a cartoon. That’s basically what we have always thought of it as, as a living cartoon come to life. The people and things that we kill on stage are oftentimes representations of obstacles that have presented themselves to GWAR over the years. You have religion, you have priests and television evangelists, you have politicians; and art! You know, the ‘artistes’ of the world. GWAR has always taken exception with those things.